Fixed Stars (Translation)
by Hiereia
Summary: You can fight against the evil. Not against love. Long before Sirius Blacks birth a prophecy existed about the downfall of his family... (Later on: Bellatrix/Sirius, NO incest! - read and find out how)
1. Chapter 1

**Fixed Stars**

This is a TRANSLATION! The original story was written by cennet in German and as I love this story very much I thought more people should be able to read it, although I don´t think I can do the original one justice :)

Prologue – The black prophecy

 _Love, love is a verb. Love is a doing word. – Massive Attack, Teardrop_

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, autumn 1944

Every Tuesday and Thursday, when the Slytherin Quidditch team practiced, a little silence overcame the common room, which Alphard Black usually thought of as soothing. Not just, that the biggest noisemaker were out of the way – most of the younger liked to watch the training, so it was possible to have your rest in the dungeon and work in peace.

Lately however, many felt intimidated and depressed by the silence, especially so as it didn´t just extend to the Slytherin premises anymore. The whole school seemed to be afflicted by it. Last year it hadn´t been this bad, but after the war slowly but surely rose to its horrible peak, even the last ones lost their laughter.

Like an eternal burial, Alphard thought shuddering, when he knocked on the door of Marlene Dumbledore´s bureau and pressed down the jack after her call.

"Black." His divining teacher sat at her desk and scribbled on a piece of parchment, the nose near the paper. "Do you grace me with your presence once again?" She lifted her head. "Oh, you even lowered yourself to bring me your essay – which you should have handed in at the beginning of the year - without a thirtieth request."

Alphard restrained the urge to roll his eyes. What did this woman expect? The world was a madhouse, new scaring news arrived all the time in this alleged secure refuge. Who actually still worried about the centauric diving art (apart from Marlene Dumbledore of course, who seemed thrilled by it)?

Generally, he liked the daughter of Professor Dumbledore, who was only a little older than her eldest students and had arrived here out of nowhere two years ago – although he would never admit that in public. Before Marlene so to speak fell from the sky, no one even suspected that Dumbledore had family at all. From where she came or who her mother was, the students could only speculate about (which they did extensively). Father and daughter appeared sealed regarding everything from the past.

"Bring it on and sit down." She was a completely different kind of person than her father though. Not that in Alphard´s eyes, who was like everyone else in his family, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, not really a Dumbledore-fan, this would be a mistake. Now however, when she read his essay with a severe look – apparently ready to lam into him if anything caught her eye that she didn´t like – he would have been much happier in the presence of her eccentric and good-natured father. He feared her criticism and lowered his head a little in precaution.

But when she began to speak, at once her voice sounded completely different than what he was used to. " _Still today there paths will cross._ " Not dexterous and tomboyish anymore, but thin and dreamy, like he had never heard from her before. Her light-blue eyes – so very similar to her father´s – seemed cloudy, but at the same time they had a strange glow. She looked directly at him, but didn´t seem to notice him at the same time.

"Professor?" Alphard whispered.

 _"_ _They will bring the way into life to one, who is the only one among the children from the house walking in light. But one good man cannot take on the thousands of sins from the past. Another child will be born into the house, who isn´t from the tribe. You will recognize her by a gift, that no one but her owns. And whereas he will do everything he can to flee from the shadow, without finding something, that can replace it, she will continue to enter the shadow and discover more of its secrets than any daughter from the Nigelli did before. The House of the night will fall with its last heir on the day, she raises her hand against her beloved and no one will come afterwards…"_

Her floating voice had become softer while she spoke. "Professor Dumbledore?" Alphard tried again. Her half-closed eyes opened, as if she awoke from a dream.

"Anything else, Black? Why are you standing around?"

Alphard stared at her, not being able to say a word. He hadn´t even noticed that he had gotten up from his stool. Now it was Marlene, who looked at him like he had gone crazy. When she left the trance, she didn´t seem to remember anything from what she had said. "What is it, Black? Don´t you have better things to do than gaping at me?"

Alphard didn´t need another invitation. He had to get out of here and cope with everything he had heard. He stood in front of her office and slowly let himself sink against the door. His family. Marlene Dumbledore had prophesied the end of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Alphard didn´t know, whether he believed in these things, but it had sounded damn real.

He turned around, when suddenly someone pulled at his hair.

"Cepheus!" His eldest brother laughed. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I thought I visit you, before I start off to France. Miss Hornby," his eyes wandered magnetically attracted to a slim figure, that stood in the background, "was so nice to bring me to you."

Olive Hornby, a black-haired, dark-skinned girl, who made her name all honor, was two years ahead of Alphard, in seventh grade. Right now she was looking at Cepheus, as if she just found a bunch of gold.

 _Still today their paths will cross_.

"Wonderful," Alphard smiled uneasily.

 **Author´s Note** (translation too): So, the prophecy was about Sirius and Bellatrix and the two who will meet at the same day are of course Sirius´ parents. The line _"…and no one will come afterwards…"_ comes from one of the prophecies, that are accidently destroyed during the fight in the Department of Mysteries. I thought of the idea as ironically beautiful, that the prophecy about the end of the House of Black can be heard one last time, while it is fulfilled in the background at the same time…

 **Translator´s Note** (:))

I hope you liked the prologue and are interested in the story. As English isn´t my mother tongue I am sorry for any language mistakes, I hope it will get better throughout the story… Please review to let me now, whether I should continue this translation – It will get even better by every chapter in my opinion.


	2. Chapter 2

1\. The Blacks are always in Slytherin

All around me are familiar faces  
Worn out places

Worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races  
Going nowhere

Going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses  
No expression

No expression

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow  
No tomorrow

No tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad  
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take  
When people run in circles it's a very very  
Mad world

Mad world

Michael Andrews, Mad World

 **Grimmauld Place 12, London, 15. Juli 1995**

"Ouch, damn it!"

"Padfoot?"

"Yes!"

"What was that?"

"I would say I stumbled over my father´s replacement eyepiece. Or a lot of them."

Silence.

"Sirius?"

"Hm?"

"Why can´t I just turn on the light?"

"You never turn on the light here, you wouldn´t see them otherwise."

"Do you want to see them? I thought we were just going to take a look and not operate Astronomy…?"

"F-k!"

"What exactly are you doing there?"

"Oh, all right. It´s getting too stupid for me too. _Lumos_!"

There are no black sheep in my family. You could rather say together they are a flock of black sheep. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. One name, one program.

That it would be wise to tidy this house again is obvious considering all the stuff lying and flying around.

 _Wiltshire Observatory for sky phenomena_ states the card stand, that insidious enough put a leg on me. This house is evil, it was never different. The junk seems to know exactly, that the white sheep of the family returned home and wants to welcome me adequate. As though my mother and Kreacher weren´t enough… I think I am slowly losing my mind.

"Look at this," Remus says to me. "Bragging they can, my family, and behind everyone´s back the state fundings are raked in. That's so typical…" Like the idiotic joke claiming that the Blacks possess their own private wheelers parking spot at the Stonehenge Observatory. (Okay, that one is real – my father and Uncle Alphard used it, later on Narcissa and even later Regulus. Narcissa probably still uses it.)

"Let´s go downstairs." Remus says and look around in the observatory rather unimpressed.

As if it´s better down there. Albus tried of course to inflict this on me gently, and when I – after an appropriate fit of rage – calmed down in the mess, that I made in Remus´ kitchen, I realized that I couldn´t afford that. I cannot ponder over the past and fall into a black hole, while I wait for my good name to be restored. (Ha! The irony of this expression becomes clear to me just now.)

The house isn´t just full of dark magic, it has also become a dump since the last time I have been here. Just thinking about staying here Merlin knows how long until the morons from the ministry start listening to us makes me sick. Not even 48 hours ago I entered the house of my fathers the first time in fifteen years and the old familiar darkness already consumes me like a flood roughing up above me without any escape in sight.

Officially it´s even been 19 years since the last time I´ve been here but - to be honest - I am not that keen on explaining to my "Order colleagues" that later - after my spectacular runaway when I was 16 – I came back once. For a single afternoon or rather early evening everything considered. However, that´s my business, my private slip-up, and doesn´t concern anybody from the Order.

I enjoy the reestablished trust the members of the Order give me way too much to test it with ancient family stories. Not that they would by any means give up what they are doing right away in order to hurry and inspect the new headquarters. Until now Remus and I are the only ones here. Honestly, I can´t even blame them. Even the air I breathe here seems to be full of hostility. But Molly and Arthur said that they´d come here with the kids within the next days. And I wish for Harry to be here, of course.

Although that seems to be an unrealizable wish for now, that much Dumbledore had clarified. We won´t get him here until just before the new school year. And I am expected to pull myself together, stay patient, work with people like Severus Snape and of all the possible places to kill time _here_.

Admittedly, there probably isn´t a safer place throughout England. At their time the Blacks were prepared with all the paraphernalia the magical safety inventions had to offer. And with Dumbledore as Secret-Keeper there couldn´t happen anything wrong anyway. From a rational-expedient point of view we are in the right place here.

That´s what everyone else thinks. But no one else grew up here like I did. No one has memories of this place lying in wait and creeping up in reckless moments. I hate Dumbledore for his rationality and logic to bring us _here_ of all places. Here, where every step I take inevitably leads me back to the beginning, to the by stars alighted darkness of the early years.

Back to _her_.

I dreamed of my cousin. It´s driving me mad: The whole time I spend with Remus, at Hogwarts, on the run – when I even was dreaming it was of stone and ice, of the waves clapping against the clips of an island far away in the north-sea. Azkaban burned into my brain so deep and lasting, that I thought I wasn´t even able to dream of anything else.

I hardly set foot into this house, I am dreaming of Bellatrix.

Oh, the dreams I had are just the same as before. Azkaban. Stone and ice. But Bellatrix is there too. Sometimes she´s a little girl,

\- _Concentrated, her eyebrows contract over a book, as she out of pure malice had to able to read at the age of five just to annoy me_ –

Sometimes a fifth year,

 _\- mockingly her mouth twitches, when she halts beside me and asks, how the O.W.L.-exams in transfiguration went and I know without the shimmer of a doubt that her spell cost me and James the night as revenge for what we did to Snape –_

Sometimes she is wearing her wedding dress, that I never really saw, just in the Daily Prophet, when I read the announcement,

\- _Saturday, June 4_ _th_ _, one day before my birthday, how tasteful, I am more drunk than I have ever been before, Lily puts her hand on my forehead, "Come on let´s go home…" Does everyone know, I wonder –_

Astounding, how firm she is anchored in my head, her eyes, her voice after all this time. And then there are the others that can´t be driven away either. But can it be healthy that after just two days I already start dreaming this rubbish and remember my misery? Am I that weak or is my legacy so strong?

Here lies my childhood in these chambers with the absurd high ceilings, in these devoured corridors, whether I like it or not. And I don´t like it. Here, I am more prone to memories, that weren´t concealed for decades for no reason, it´s just natural.

This damn house is full of photos, maybe that´s a reason too. The Black have a permanent urge to present themselves, sometimes that gets morbid quite easily. It´s just impossible to avoid all the pictures of my people here.

Out of some sadistic reasons faces me another wall of pictures on my way downstairs. The wedding picture of my grandparents on my mother´s side. My father with his head boy badge. Aunt Elladora holding little Andromeda in her arms. Everything is muddled – there is no chronology. And like magically attracted my eyes move to the one with us children.

We are all on it. Although I have my back turned to the crowd and Andromeda is leaning obviously bored in at the frame. Narcissa is playing with her feathery, blonde hair. Regulus is smiling his odd smile – directly at the camera but at the same time strangely aimless. Like his whole life was, I think. He was strong, my brother, in many senses stronger than me – as long as it wasn´t about him, he could endure pretty much everything. That was his undoing.

Bellatrix is sitting on the grass, her arms hugging her knees und is looking up under heavy eyelids that gave her even us a child constant bedroom eyes. Until we were enrolled in school she wore her hair relatively short, not even reaching her shoulders. Henceforth she let it grow out. At times it reached up to her hips, so that she had to fix it rigorously with hairpins for Quidditch.

I remember how the picture was taken. In summer 1968. The same week, when we sat in the garden of Black Manor for tea – it was my ninth birthday -, grabbed in front of everyone a knife and cut once over her wrist. The excitement was great. I personally would have never imagined that so much blood could flow from a single cut-wound.

Bellatrix didn´t bother to explain properly what she thought she was doing. Pale and ghostly still she sat with a bandaged hand in Uncle Alphard´s lap and didn´t have a better answer to the questions and stunned faces than that she had wanted to know, whether it was "actually possible" (to bleed out? To scare us all to death?). And how it felt like.

Today I think – false, today I _know_ of course, that there was something essentially wrong with my family. Over generations the excessive use of the Dark Arts must have influenced the mental stability of the family members. But in my childhood - that, in spite of everything I alleged afterwards, has considering everything that should happen almost abnormally happy – this seemed to be the only way of existing for me. I assume it´s like that for most people. You just don´t question the things you grow up with as a child. Admittedly, I never got along with the last two inhibitors of my parent´s house – neither with my mother nor with Kreacher.

But I think, the relatively intact world of my childhood can be seen best by the fact that the day, it started to crack, I still remember lively and exact.

 _Once again the diverse heads of the family of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black hat met at Grimmauld Place Number 12 in order to celebrate the festival of love and hope together. The full program took place: banquet, streams of high percentage alcohol and the inevitable howling under the Christmas tree._

 _What a nonsense, my ten year old self thought, when I trudged morosely into the entrance hall. It would just degenerate into another drunk rift. After all, you couldn´t expect a clan like ours, that took every chance to kill each other, to suddenly become a cozy storybook family (and that also under the influence of alcohol). My mother hated her sister in law, my Uncle Orion thought of my Uncle Alphard as a total failure and we all would have been happy to see Araminta Meliflua, my mother´s cousin six feet under the earth, where she in her age for Merlin´s sake belonged._

 _With that kind of constellation the Christmas had no other choice than to burst into flames out of pure frustration. (To say the truth, I thought to help that a little bit on and had already made all the preparations. What was there else to do with ones Christmassy free time, when the old didn´t pester you with Hogwarts preparations for once?)_

 _Kreacher began screeching, when he saw the muddy footprints I left behind on the parquet after an extensive expedition trough the snow-covered garden._

 _"_ _Stop the bawling and let me take a bath right now!" I yelled back without felling the slightest bit of guilt and slapped a hand over my mouth at the thought my mother might have heard that. If there was something I didn´t need right now, it was telling-off concerning the fact, that I should be shining example for my little brother – instead of behaving worse than Regulus could ever manage._

 _I took the escape and followed the infuriated to himself babbling House-Elf up to the second floor, where my room with the corresponding bathroom where located, when suddenly something arouse my curiosity. There was light coming through a crack under the door to the forbidden room. What did that mean? Was this the reason why my mother didn´t immediately rebuke me, when I was yelling downstairs? However, I definitely knew that even my parents never entered this room. Usually, it was locked – much to my chagrin and our mother forbid my brother and I to even talk about it._

 _What in Salazar´s name was someone doing in there at Christmas Eve of all times?_

 _I didn´t need two seconds to realize that I was offered an unprecedented opportunity to find out the deepest and darkest secrets of the Black´s household. At the drop of a head I parted from Kreacher and put my ear against the massive ebony door. As expected not a single sound could be heard. Here, another step needed to be taken. Shortly I weighed the delights of the upcoming party up against an evening under house-arrest and carefully pressed down the ball. The door opened surprisingly enough effort- and soundlessly._

 _After I was already counting on my mother to drag me out by the collar, I stood rather indecisive at the threshold to a completely empty and unexpectedly small room. Where were they? I took me a few seconds to realize that there was another room behind a with fabrics half covered passage. When I got nearer I finally heard voices._

 _And then I saw them. My Aunt Elladora sat on a red canape, her legs crossed beneath a heavy robe. Behind her I could spot an artfully carved desk as well as some bookshelves. And there was someone else in the room. Someone, I could only hear the voice of, another woman._

 _"_ _I don´t think that´s a good idea."_

 _"_ _Really not?" My aunt lifted her head. Her wonderful hair shimmered in the diffuse light of the room like liquid gold. Just one of her daughters inherited this hair color, the eldest and the youngest were just as raven-haired as it should be for Blacks. "Maybe," Elladora said and mockingly put her chin – how superior - in her hands, "Maybe I know best, what is good for my daughter."_

 _"_ _Bellatrix is just a child", the stranger answered, whose voice slowly contained an exhausted type of resistance. "She cannot decide, where she wants to live, but you can." Now I could see parts of her, when she bent down to Elladora and even reached out her hand. "Give her to me. Albus and I will take care of her and he will never gain power over her."_

 _Elladora stared at the woman with an expression, that could only be interpreted as incredulous contempt. "You really seem to think I am behind. Do you actually think I don´t know why we are having this conversation? Do you really believe I would just for one second think about entrusting you with my flesh and blood?" Her lower jaw quivered slightly. "You cannot get over the fact that I gave birth to his child, Minerva, and not you."_

 _Unnoticed I slowly pulled back. I had heard enough. It was about her, of course. Once again. Technically, it was always about her. To Elladora her two eldest daughters barely seemed to exist, to her husband it was pretty much the same. To her only two really were important: her studies of the Dark Arts and her youngest one, Bellatrix._

 _However, to the rest of the family Bellatrix just as well took the honor, that should have been mine, the heir of the Blacks. Although she was - except for my younger brother – the youngest one and half a year younger than me, it was never questioned who the child prodigy in our family was. (And in the following years it should become also clear without a doubt, who the white sheep was.) Her elder sisters were just as unable to keep up as Regulus and I. The adults worshipped her, my Uncle Alphard the most, who never got married and whose other favorite child for some reasons I was._

 _Sometimes I thought, that I would gladly cut off my arm, if my mother would spare me the same attention that Bellatrix got from Elladora. As if she really liked me – not just see me as the continuation of the bloodline. Whatever the stranger wanted, Elladora wouldn´t give in, that much was clear to me. Because she wanted what was best for her daughter._

 _Not knowing what next to do I stood in the hallway for some time, until I eventually shuffled over to the Green Saloon. My thirst for action from before faded away, I felt terribly tired. As if a mountain range had been loaded on my shoulders – as with the strange guy in the legend. I was even too tired to make light. And therefore it took a while until I noticed her._

 _She lied convolved on the sofa in front of the fireplace, where no fire burned. The only source of light were a few greenish lamps, which in my opinion made the room appear even gloomier than it was anyway. In this light I could only unclearly make out my cousin – the half-closed eyes, the green illuminated cheekbones and the raven-black hair, that poured out on her pillow._

 _It was a habit of her – she always wore clothes that were a little bit too big. Maybe there were Narcissa´s, the next oldest of my cousins. They´d never allow me or one of the other children to do that, but it belonged to Bellatrix like the web belonged to the spider._

 _"_ _Shall I make light?" I offered._

 _"_ _No," she said absently. "I like it this way."_

 _I know, that was true. She could see well in the dark, all Blacks did. That´s a result of the stargazing, the night is our day. It´s somehow In our genes – together with the black hair and the grey eyes, the gift for transfiguration and for the defense device against dementia, that were necessary due to the marriages between close relatives within the pureblood-community._

 _Not a single second I thought about telling her what I just heard and therefore I should never know how much she possibly knew. We sat in silence until Andromeda came to pick us up for the opening of the Christmas presents._

Of course I hadn´t really understood what I had heard of the conversation between my aunt and Minerva McGonagall. Even today I sometimes wonder, if my memory played a trick on me. How could my youngest cousin - who admittedly looked a lot like her mother and nothing like my Uncle Orion – grow up in our house as a child from another man?

Bellatrix would have been a way better heir to the Black House than me, something I had to hear a lot as a child off the record. It was the drama of my teenager days that she was the prodigy child of the Dark Arts and I the white sheep of the family. I didn´t have a talent – at least not an outstanding one, like it was expected from the heir – for the Dark Arts, the one type of magic that had value in my family.

And Bellatrix is a Parseltongue. The first one in nearly three-hundred years in our family. So I had actually lost in the first place. I think it´s not a surprise that my cousin joined a movement whose aim it was to maintain the privileges of a minority that did nothing to deserve them.

In every sense she was born on the sunny side of live – although that happens to be deceptive, when you grow up in a house that is kept artificially dark by the inhabitants. No matter what time of the day or night when you look outside through the windows of Grimmauld Place 12 – you can always admire the nocturnal firmament.

Anyway, one sentence I like a lot – although I don´t remember where I read it – is : _As someone has an affliction, he just as well has an opinion._

That's how it was with me. My handicap was my cousin and the bothersome fact that she was better than me at everything. I could do what I wanted – Bellatrix just had a natural talent at everything my family valued.

That there were other talents that were of use and which I actually owned was something I first realized in Hogwarts. I got into Gryffindor and for the first time in my life met people who didn´t despise me because I wasn´t great regarding the Dark Arts – in fact they even admired me for being different from my family.

I know what Bellatrix would say – did say on various occasions with a mocking curl of her lips: _That went fast. At home you can´t become anything because I will always be better than you, so you condemn the Dark Arts and us in order to become a fighter for the light._

Not a very nice thought.

Even nowadays he still angers me so much that I feel the urge to move. Without a thought I swing a leg over the banister and slide down, just like Regulus, Bellatrix and I used to as children. I jump off, land on my feet as in old times – and fall in horror almost down again.

Downstairs in the hall, one elbow propped up against the banisters stands the last person who I want to be witnessed by. Severus Go-to-Hell Snape.

When I see Snape I could punch him in the face. And when I don´t see him I could punch him in the face as well. Typically somehow, that of all the members of the order he has to show up first and that also in a for me highly unsuitable moment. Of course, when it comes to Snape, _every_ moment is wrong – but this one in particular.

"Home sweet home." He greets me gloating.

"Is there a reason why you are lie in wait for me here?"

" _I,_ " he emphasizes, "just came back from a mission. And _you_ should get used to the fact that you are not the center of the world."

This friendly conversation was just a bit too loud. Before I can bring out another one, an ear-splitting clamor makes us both jump.

" _SSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCUUUUUUMMMMM! Filthy blood traitors soiling the house of my fathers_!"

"My heart," Severus whispers and lifts a hand to his chest, as if he fears a fit. "You could think she is standing directly behind you." I haven´t seen him this startled since the memorable day, when I chose to wait in the castle to see if James made it to him in time or if Remus would tear him to pieces.

" _Wretched creeps, bugger off!"_

"Oh, just shut up," I say, while I try to draw the curtains together and intentionally leave out who I addressed. The yelling slowly stops so that Snape doesn´t have to raise his voice when he comments: "It has to be a nice feeling, being welcomed home this warmly after all this time… But, everyone what he deserves."

Is it a surprise, that my fur balks regularly just by looking at Snape? I just want to make a nasty remark myself, when I notice that his appearance leaves much to be desired. A little more than usually.

Water is running out of his hair and out his just as black clothes and is wetting my mother´s Persian carpet. His eyes are huge and dark in his ashen face and he doesn´t seem safe on his feet – maybe that´s why he is holding onto the banisters. All in all I can´t help but to realize that he probably didn´t eat in a while.

"You look like shit, Severus." Typical Remus – I think and he talks. The yelling brought him here and now he is looking at our surprise-guest with a calm self-control only he owns. No not self- _control_. There is nothing, that why he would have to keep his act together.

To be honest, I have no clue what Remus feels towards Remus. He´d never admit whether he is angry at him for telling his secret last year. Remus Lupin is the proudest man I know. He doesn´t wear his pride like a weapon in front of him like Snape and I (which is why it ours is always in danger of getting hurt), but that´s exactly what makes him in comparison to us invulnerable.

Snape drives a slender, white hand over his face. "I probably look like someone who used after 72 hours without sleep a rarely used Floo Network link. What I did by the way."

"Yeah, that´s what you look like." Remus nods.

"And you could use a bath." I can´t stop myself from saying.

Just how exhausted he really is can be seen by the fact that he without another comment follows Remus in the direction of a bathroom. Well, he will have his pleasure with that one. In my time the ground floor bathroom has already been a disaster.

What the hell has he been doing? He wouldn´t tell in a hundred years – no, he will wait until a meeting is summoned. If at all. Whatever Voldemort asked of him to reestablish his integrity, it can´t have been a piece of cake.

But know he has done it, I don´t doubt. I haven´t seen him since the fateful day after the Triwizard Tournament. The only thing I know is Dumbledore sent him somewhere. Sighing I follow Remus into the kitchen. Chances are good, that I will never know.

 _The week before our departure to Hogwarts we headed out: my cousins, my father, my aunt Elladora, my Uncle Alphard and I. Uncle Alphard liked us. Naturally, Narcissa was his favourite, the only true stargazer our generation brought up. But we were all Blacks – eyes like steel and hair as black as the sky at night. Uncle Alphard couldn´t help himself – he, who didn´t have children of his own, was proud of us and our family resemblance._

 _Of course Bellatrix and I have been in Diagon Alley before. But today the most important and exciting event in the life of a first-year was imminent: the choice of the wands. And we weren´t just a little excited._

 _While my father walked around with Andromeda and Narcissa, we were hauled to Ollivander´s by Alphard and Elladora. Ollivander welcomed us with utmost friendliness – a family with five children was good clientele. But we would have been welcomed like that anyway – we were the Blacks after all._

 _Of course, it was expected of me to let my cousin step forward and although I didn´t like that one bit I didn´t complain. The first wand she tried didn´t live long enough to meet her requirements._

 _"_ _Wrong combo?" Bellatrix asked innocently, the rest of the exploded wand still in her hand._

 _"_ _I´ve never seen anything like that before!" Uncle Alphard said, but he didn´t sound appalled, more … taken. Of course, I thought and tried not to roll my eyes, it´s another one of Bellatrix´ specialties. Why did the woman always have to be extraordinary? Bad enough it was_ her _who had the gift and not_ me _but sometimes I was just bugged enormously that everyone made such a fuss of her._

 _However, Ollivander didn´t look like has never seen something like that before. Pensive he touched his chin without looking away from my cousin. "I am wondering, if… It could be." He turned around and began to rummage in the back of his shop. He came back with a small case made of dark leather that didn´t seem new but completely unused._

 _Bellatrix didn´t even have to swing the new model, the magic inside of it awoke to life by itself. She rotated her wrist a bit and with a silvery ring pale spark flew out and swirled away live leaves in a storm. "Seems fitting," she said in delight._

 _"_ _Yew-tree and phoenix feather, 11 inches." Ollivander seemed to be deep in thought, "Excellent for charms."_

 _"_ _Yew-tree and phoenix feather," Aunt Elladora repeated quietly. "I knew that."_

 _"_ _Come on Sirius," Uncle Alphard encouraged me before I could ask what she meant by that. "It´s your turn now."_

 _To my disappointment I didn´t manage to destroy wands just by taking them in my hand. I sighed inwardly. This seemed to be one of the many things, Bellatrix outmatched me. But the chaos that I created with the first five or six wands I got was more than satisfactory. That was totally normal, Ollivander assured me when Bellatrix and my aunt began to look impatiently at a watch. "Nobody finds his wand right away."_

 _But I found it when I didn´t even believed it anymore. Juniper and fern, 13 inches. Very suitable for transfiguration according to Ollivander. I beamed. Though I didn´t know yet whether I would like transfiguration, I had a great feeling about the fact that my wand was longer than Bellatrix´._

 _The time after our visit in Diagon Alley flew by. Bellatrix and I let the House-Elves pack our suitcases and used remaining time to get familiar with our wands. Miraculously no one died. But finally – after an amusing train ride that we spent by running around Bellatrix´sisters, who were unfortunately Head-girl and Prefect – the time had come and we entered along with other first years the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Like black spray the others surrounded us, while we stood still in the middle and tried to spot our namesakes on the enchanted ceiling._

 _We didn´t mind in the least to be in the way. We wandered through the school as if it belonged to us. Which it did in a way. Out great-great-grandfather had been headmaster. Our fathers head-boy and their fathers before them. Bellatrix mother had achieved as many NEWT´s as was possible and Uncle Alphard had won the Quidditch-cup with his six years in a row. It was like coming home._

 _My family´s u_ _nshakable_ _awareness_ _of_ _tradition_ _was in my opinion shown especially concerning one thing: No one had considered it necessary to point out to us how indispensable it was for us to get into Slytherin. It was a naturalness and I was as familiar with the expectations of me as with the stairs and hallways in my home._

 _When the elders talked about the houses in Hogwarts, then the other three houses were always dismissed as a whole like a diffuse three-headed construct that should have no influence on our lives._

 _With our own arrogant self-evidence, Bellatrix and I simply pushed forward through the crowd after we had finished our star hour until we had a good view of the Sorting Hat. Someone pushed me. Annoyed I turned around and looked into a pair of infuriated hazelnut eyes behind glasses. I groaned internally. Potter – I could have guessed._

 _We knew each other fleetingly. His parent were purebloods, but both from old Gryffindor-dynasties. We got out of our ways as good as possible without threatening the bourgeois decency. Bellatrix pulled me away. Perhaps, she feared a fight, what shouldn´t happen as we were about to be called. Due to our surnames we didn´t have to wait for long._

 _So we turned our hand to the Deputy Headmistress when she explained how the Sorting would work. I swallowed myself in fright when she began to talk. Without a doubt she was the same woman who visited us on Christmas eve._

 _She looked around when she called the first name… and her gaze lingered for a moment on my cousin. The serious blue eyes glowed with emotions I didn´t understand._

 _"_ _This woman hates me." Bellatrix said tightly, when the first victim of the Sorting Hat claimed the teacher´s attention. "I don´t know why, but it´s true."_

 _I will never understand what held me back. In this moment I could have told her. I could have told her that I had seen Minerva McGonagall berofre and that she had talked with Elldaora about Bellatrix. But I didn´t do it and the moment passed and Bellatrix sat under the Sorting Hat. I watched her expression closely. My aunt had told me, that there was a possibility that the Hat would want to talk some time with a student. Bellatrix elegant, strong eye-brows curved in her pale face in a mental conversation with the Hat. A smile played around her lips. She shook her head determined. And then –_

 _"_ _SLYTHERIN!"_

 _Cheering came from the green and silver decorated table on the left side of the hall, when my cousin ran over to be welcomed by her sisters._

 _I watched as Andromeda and Narcissa hugged her, when I sat below the Hat myself. Everyone was there or would be soon, all the children and adolescents I grew up with, the heirs of old houses and I would be there in a second –_

 _But the Hat shouted "GRYFFINDOR!" – without even giving me a chance to object – and I thought I wouldn´t survive the shame._

I ´m shooing around on a chair in the kitchen thinking: What in Merlin´s name are you doing? Isn´t there something else to brood over than your crappy childhood?

 _No,_ a quit voice mocks me in my head.

I watch Remus making ta. And bread. Snape hasn´t reappeared yet. "Would you check on him?" Remus asks. "I sent Kreacher with something to wear half an hour ago." I can think of better things than visit Snape in the bathroom, but I stand up from the stool well-behaved and obedient and do what I am told to do."

No one reacts to my knocking, so I push the handle down – torn between the apprehension to see more than I want and a vague hope that he could lie there with sliced arteries. A mixture of both is waiting for me: he is lying in the bathtub and therefore isn´t wearing anything. But the slight raising and sinking chest unfortunately speaks against suicide. And he is sleeping. And in his sleep he doesn´t look one day older than twenty. Strange.

The lips are pale and his mouth slightly open. The raven-black eyelashes and eyebrows stand out against his ghostly-white face. He must be dreaming. He´s turning his head from side to side in his head. I can see how his eyes move beneath his eyelids. I have never seen him this unprotected. The Severus Snape I know would never – _never_ – fall asleep in his enemy´s bathtub.

Post-stress-syndrome, I think. He must have gotten through a lot. And I want to know what that is. I bend down and want to shake him awake at his shoulder, but just by the slightest touch his eyes jump wide open.

"No!" he gasps. "Don´t say the word!" Then he recognizes me and realizes where he is and looks at me unfriendly.

"Here are a few fresh clothes." I say. "And there will be dinner soon." I turn on the heel and hurry out. "Do you know what is happening here?" I ask Remus. Remus doesn´t know.

 _What is happening here? I ask myself, when Bellatrix leaves me in the Great Hall and follows her house-mates down to the dungeon so that I don´t have another chance but to follow her example. Just that this meant in my case to climb up the stairs among lots of red-golden decorated people._

 _I felt miserable. I didn´t talk to anyone. I thought about jumping down as soon as I reached the top. I wanted to write my parents that they should have sent me to Durmstrang._

 _My parents! The thought went through me boiling hot. How should I tell them? Did Andromeda already sent a letter? What would they say?_

 _Well, what, Sirius? A voice chimed in in my head, who annoyingly sounded like my little brother Regulus. Are you daft?_

 _No, no, I assure them. I know what I am going to say. I am as unclouded as a man in my position can be._

 _One of the undeniable disadvantages, when you were put in Gryffindor was, I realized was that I had to share a dormitory with Gryffindors. I lied down, two others were already occupied one by a slim brown-haired boy and the other by a small dark-blonde one. They didn´t introduce themselves and I didn´t either. Waste of time, Merlin knew I had other problems._

 _I just wanted to wallow myself in self-pity and grow my hate at Hogwarts and the whole world in general - when the door opened again and James Potter entered the room._

 _My stroke of luck wasn´t breaking off, it seemed._

 _"_ _Oh my congratulations," he immediately mocked me as soon as he saw me. "Who would have thought that among all the brave Walpurgis-knights your family your family produced someone would become lost in Gryffindor."_

 _"_ _Shut your unwashed mouth, four-eyes," I shot back without honoring him with a side-glance._

 _"_ _My apologies," he said with a big smirk now turning to the two other boys, who listened to our verbal exchange curiously. "A little talk among known. My name is James Potter and he´s Sirius Black."_

 _The two introduced themselves as Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew._

 _"_ _Don´t believe for a second that you can talk for me, Potter!" I yelled. "Just because your family out of our point of view isn´t quite at the end of the food chain – "_

 _"_ _Oh, fall down dead, Black!" he hissed back. "Your pureblood-fuss isn´t useful here, we are in Gryffindor." He grinned sardonically. "Where we would be at the starting point of your problem."_

 _On that there was only one possible answer. In seconds I held my wand under his nose. He grinned patronizingly. "Whoa, don´t you have along thing!" He wasn´t the slightest bit scraed of me, that much was obvious. Blacks liked to be feared. It infuriated me immensely that he wasn´t afraid._

 _Pettigrew giggled nervously. Lupin was watching us attentively as if he secretly wondered if the two of us had gone mad but was too polite to express his suspicion loudly._

 _"_ _PETRFICUS TOTALUS!" I shouted. Potter opened his eyes wide and stood still. Nothing happened._

 _I couldn´t possibly sink any further, I thought desperately. Why was Bellatrix able to do that and I wasn´t?!_

To see Severus Snape dressed in another color than black was a memorable sight, especially when the color was red. Dark-red admittedly, but still red, the Gryffindor-color. However, he couldn´t be as starved as I first thought him to be. Just a little bit and when we are finished and set the dishes aside, he shortly leaves the room and returns with two bottles of hard liquor. When I see that it´s a Wodka and a Firewhisky I get suspicious about what he might have done.

What this is about is clear: collective drunkenness in the evening. What is disconcerting is the fact that Snape suggested it. As much as I know, he doesn´t drink and when he does then not with us.

"So, aren´t you going to spit out what´s going on now?" I get on his tracks.

"No," Snape growls back. "But thanks for the inquiry."

Remus sighs. "Something is obviously wrong…"

"Everything is alright, everything went as is had to." Snape snubs. "I just don´t want to – be alone tonight." He laboriously squeezes out. His eyes are gleaming, as if he was in pain for admitting that. "Is that so hard to understand?"

 **Next chapter** : _In Grimmauld Place:_ Snape talks about what he had to do in order to be get back into Voldemort´s string. And Sirius realizes something hurtful. But a lot of things will get clearer. _In the Past_ : Sirius becomes an Animagus, risks a glance into the Mirror of Erised, makes a mistake he will regret his whole life, run happily away from home and loses his virginity (You will never guess to whom :))

Please review, it makes me update faster!


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